department of chemistry

Knee 'Scaffold' Study Offers New Hope for Injury Victims

Scientists in Britain are taking advanced surgical research further with the potential to offer new hope for knee-injury victims. They are following up international research that aims to improve knee cartilage repair techniques, termed ‘chrondrocyte implantation’. The procedure, developed in Sweden ten years ago, involves growing a patient’s knee cartilage cells in a laboratory, which are then implanted through open knee surgery. Recent exciting developments revolve around the materials or ‘scaffolds’ that the cells are grown on. The scaffold is inserted into the knee with the seeded cells growing on it, and disintegrates slowly once the knee’s cartilage cells have become established.

Computer program reveals optimum microstructure for new materials

A Princeton chemist has developed a general mathematical system for designing materials that perform two functions at once, even when the desired properties sometimes conflict with each other. Salvatore Torquato and colleagues used computers to calculate the optimum structure for any material that is a composite of two substances with differing properties. The achievement is the first simple example of a mathematically rigorous method for optimizing the design of multifunctional composites, which are an increasingly common kind of material.